Education

Profile

Lane Ryo Hirabayashi is a full professor in the Department of Asian American Studies at UCLA, where he is also the inaugural "George & Sakaye Aratani Chair in Japanese American Incarceration, Redress, and Community.”

While Lane was growing up, his dad Jim encouraged and enabled him to travel extensively. By the time he finished graduate school, Lane had been to Asia, Central and South America, Europe, and Africa. Among his favorite cities today he counts Tokyo, Kyoto, Cebu City, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, London, Paris, and Malaga, as well as Zaria and Kano (both in northern Nigeria).

After years dedicated to classical and American folk music and blues, Lane decided to pursue doctoral studies in 1974. He earned an M.A. (1976) and then a Ph.D. (1981) in Socio-cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. Subsequently, Lane held a post-doctoral fellowship at the UCLA's Asian American Studies Center, 1981-82. He is author or editor of over thirty scholarly articles, as well as nine books and anthologies. His "research in progress" includes: a biographical project based on his uncle, Gordon K. Hirabayashi's war-time diary and letters that will be published by the University of Washington Press in 2013; a book-length manuscript on Japanese American resettlement in Colorado as of 1946; and a cycle of articles focusing on the post-war life and writing of Carlos Bulosan, a project that he is writing in collaboration with Marilyn C. Alquizola.

In terms of current classes, Lane teaches courses on the Japanese American experience, Asian American history through the medium of documentaries, and contemporary issues in the Asian American community, among other classes and seminars.

In addition to his academic resume, Lane has actively sought ties to community-based organizations as one of the foundations to his academic work. Over the past thirty years he has worked with a wide range of groups including: NCRR (both the "National Coalition for Redress/Reparations," and the renamed "Nikkei for Civil Rights and Reparations"], Los Angeles; the Gardena Pioneer Project; East-West Players, Los Angeles; the Japanese Community Youth Council, San Francisco; the Japanese American Community Graduation Program, Denver; the "Harada House" museum project, Riverside; and the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles. He also serves as a board member and/or consultant with many other Japanese American community organizations.

Hirabayashi, L.R. "Afterword." The House on Lemon Street, by M. Rawitsch. Boulder: University Press of Colorado (2012).

Hirabayashi, L.R. "Comments on the Afternoon Session, October 13," Japanese and Asian Americans: Racializations and Their Resistances, Yasuko Takezawa, ed. Kyoto: Institute for Research in the Humanities (February, 2012), 121-126.

Awards

Invited to give the 9th Annual Paul H. and Erika Bourguignon Lecture in Art and Anthropology. (This annual lecture is sponsored by the Department of Anthropology. The lecture was held on Thursday, May 3, 2012, in OSU's Mendenhall Lab, 125 South Oval Mall, The Ohio State University)., May 3, 2012

Young Research Library, display case featuring the CV and research of Lane R. Hirabayashi.(This is the first time in the history of the Center or the Department that an Asian American Studies’ faculty person has been thus featured). December 2006

Nominated to, and holds, the “George and Sakaye Aratani Chair on Japanese American Incarceration, Redress, and Community,” Asian American Studies Department, University of California, Los Angeles. 2006 to date

Book Award: “Kokusai Rikai Sokushin Sho” (Promotion of International Understanding award).(This award is given to original books, translated books, or language learning texts, which promote international exchanges and understanding on international issues as well as to contribute the development of international communication).

Nominated "visiting professor" under the auspices of “The Endowed Chair in Japanese American Studies,” 1996-1997, Asian American Studies Center, University of California, Los Angeles. 1996-1997

Awarded “Outstanding Undergraduate Advisor, 1993-1994,” by the Council on Academic Advising, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1994.